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  • Boundaries – Memo Akten, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice April 20 – November 24, 2024 Boundaries – Memo Akten, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice April 20 – November 24, 2024 Boundaries – Memo Akten, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice April 20 – November 24, 2024 Boundaries – Memo Akten, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice April 20 – November 24, 2024

    Boundaries – Memo Akten

    Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice April 20 – November 24, 2024

    Presented by the Vanhaerents Art Collection in dialogue with the theme of the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, Boundaries is a new exhibition by Turkish-born, London-based artist Memo Akten.

     

    At its core is Akten’s latest digital animation, Boundaries (2023–24), a meditative exploration of life and our deep interconnectedness with the universe. Using cutting-edge artificial intelligence, the work reimagines borders not as divisions, but as permeable zones that connect us to what lies beyond.

     

    Moving seamlessly from the molecular to the cosmic, Akten weaves together sound and imagery drawn from the everyday and the transcendent, the natural and the virtual, the organic and the inanimate.

     

    Boundaries was commissioned by the Vanhaerents Art Collection specifically for this exhibition.

  • Au bout de mes rêves - Tripostal (Lille) , October 6, 2023 - 14 January 2024 Au bout de mes rêves - Tripostal (Lille) , October 6, 2023 - 14 January 2024 Au bout de mes rêves - Tripostal (Lille) , October 6, 2023 - 14 January 2024 Au bout de mes rêves - Tripostal (Lille) , October 6, 2023 - 14 January 2024

    Au bout de mes rêves - Tripostal (Lille)

    October 6, 2023 - 14 January 2024

    Since 2007, lille3000 has transformed the iconic Tripostal into a stage for world-class contemporary art, hosting exhibitions with leading international collections such as the Pinault Collection, Saatchi Gallery, Centre Pompidou, and Fondation Cartier.

     

    In autumn 2023, the spotlight turned to Belgium with the Vanhaerents Art Collection, one of the country’s most significant private collections of contemporary art. Entitled Au bout de mes rêves (“To the End of My Dreams”)—a nod to Jean-Jacques Goldman’s 1982 song—the exhibition reflects collector Walter Vanhaerents’ spirit of risk-taking, passion, and commitment.

     

    Spread across Tripostal’s three floors, the exhibition brought together powerful, socially engaged works that balance intensity with moments of light and wonder—reminding us that where dreams exist, hope and renewal are never far behind.

     

    Featured artists: David Altmejd, Mark Handforth, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Mariko Mori, Yoshitomo Nara, Ivan Navarro, Laure Prouvost, Tomás Saraceno, Yinka Shonibare, Emmanuel Taku, Kehinde Wiley, and more.

  • The Death of James Lee Byars — Zad Moultaka in Dialogue, May 11 - November 24, 2019

    The Death of James Lee Byars — Zad Moultaka in Dialogue

    May 11 - November 24, 2019

    Curated by Walter Vanhaerents for the 58th Venice Biennale, this was the Vanhaerents Art Collection’s second international exhibition. Presented in the historic Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione and recognized as an official Collateral Event, it welcomed over 130,000 visitors.

     

    Conceived in dialogue with Zad Moultaka (Lebanon’s representative at the 57th Biennale), the project re-examined James Lee Byars’s seminal work The Death of James Lee Byars (1994).

    Byars’s original Brussels performance divided a gallery into two chambers: a room entirely clad in gold leaf—evoking the immortal soul—and a dark, curtained room alluding to bodily mortality. A half-circle of gold leaf extended onto the sidewalk while a violinist played Béla Bartók; upon leaving, Byars left five Swarovski crystals as a symbolic body. Created while the artist faced a grave illness, the work is a lucid meditation on transience and continuity.

     

    In Venice, the golden room was reconstructed to church scale, inviting visitors to drift within its reflective void. Moultaka’s Vocal Shadows, inspired by the Book of the Dead, unfolded through loudspeakers along the nave, guiding audiences toward the luminous cube and amplifying the work’s ritual charge. The installation underscored how Byars’s inquiries into death, belief, and the thresholds of perception continue to shape contemporary practice.

  • Heartbreak hotel, Zuecca Project Space (56th Venice Biennale) -MAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 Heartbreak hotel, Zuecca Project Space (56th Venice Biennale) -MAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 Heartbreak hotel, Zuecca Project Space (56th Venice Biennale) -MAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 Heartbreak hotel, Zuecca Project Space (56th Venice Biennale) -MAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

    Heartbreak hotel

    Zuecca Project Space (56th Venice Biennale) -MAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

    Heartbreak Hotel marked the first major international exhibition of the Vanhaerents Art Collection, curated by Walter Vanhaerents on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale. Presented at Zuecca Project Space on Giudecca, the show took inspiration from Elvis Presley’s haunting 1956 hit Heartbreak Hotel, transforming its themes of solitude and longing into a contemporary reflection on art, emotion, and desire.

     

    Bringing together thirteen works by artists including Cindy Sherman, Ugo Rondinone, Katharina Fritsch, Andy Warhol, Yinka Shonibare, Bruce Nauman, and others, the exhibition explored the vocabulary of loneliness through figures such as Sherman’s aging socialites, Rondinone’s clown, and Warhol’s Christ.

     

    Installed in the former Jesuit complex Le Zitelle, the exhibition contrasted sacred architecture with modern alienation, inviting visitors to reflect on art’s commodification and the intimacy of collecting. At its entrance stood Markus Schinwald’s life-size sculpture of Walter Vanhaerents himself—a fitting symbol for a show that blurred the line between collector, collection, and self-portrait.

     

    Featuring works by Sam Falls, Katharina Fritsch, Matthew Day Jackson, Bruce Nauman, Ugo Rondinone, Markus Schinwald, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Lucien Smith, Nick van Woert, Joana Vasconcelos, Bill Viola, and Andy Warhol.